School employees with no students to teach are stepping up to hand out food so kids can eat at home.

Restaurants with no customers to serve delivering their food to seniors and others.

Food banks, too, are ramping up operations to feed the hungry.

Scared police, firefighters, and paramedics, doctors, nurses, and surgeons, bank tellers, grocery store stock boys, journalists, and others are still clocking in every day to keep as much of the world running as they possibly safely can.

Volunteers are stepping up to watch the children of people who have no daycare to rely on even as the community relies on them to keep showing up for work.

On the streets of Northeast Michigan, grandchildren are grocery shopping for grandparents, neighbors are running errands for neighbors, siblings are turning their sidewalks into Monopoly boards, and a million other small acts of kindness are unfolding.

We need our government, from mayors and township supervisors to governors and the president, to show leadership and offer guidance on how we can respond to the coronavirus outbreak that is shutting down aspects of our lives one by one.

But government officials are not the ones who will help us survive this emergency and climb back when it finally passes — and it will pass.

Nay. You, dear readers, are the ones who will pull us through.

All around us, people are stepping up.

Join them.

(THE ALPENA NEWS)

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P.S.: Today is National Doctor’s Day, and the medical professionals of this nation are more than earning the recognition. Thank you, docs, for all you’re doing to keep us safe in this time of crisis.